Michelle Carter Will Serve 15 Months in Prison for Texting Her Boyfriend to Commit Suicide

UPDATE, AUGUST 3, 2017: Michelle Carter, the woman who was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after encouraging her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, to commit suicide, was given a two-and-a-half-year sentence by Massachusetts Judge Lawrence Moniz on Thursday. Carter will serve 15 months in prison and then be eligible for probation. The judge additionally ruled that she must remain under supervised probation until August of 2022.

According to The Boston Globe, Moniz told the court that he didn't think Carter's age at the time of Roy's suicide (she was 17) or her mental health issues were factors in the text messages she sent encouraging Roy to take his own life, saying, “I am satisfied that she is mindful of the actions for which she now stands convicted."

Prior to the sentencing, Roy's father and sister spoke before the judge and detailed the pain and suffering they experienced after Roy's death. “How could Michelle Carter behave so viciously and encourage my son to end his life?” Roy's father, Conrad Roy, Jr., said. “Where was her humanity? In what world was this behavior OK and acceptable?”

As the Globe noted, Judge Moniz "stayed the sentence, at the request of Carter’s lawyers, while her appeal makes its way through the state court system."

This post was originally published on June 16, 2017.

Michelle Carter—who in 2014 sent numerous text messages to then boyfriend Conrad Roy III urging him to commit suicide—was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Friday. Carter had previously waived her right to a trial, and the verdict was given in a nonjury trial by Massachusetts judge Lawrence Moniz, who said Carter's actions were not just immoral but illegal, according to The New York Times.

CBS News reports that Carter and Roy first met in 2012, when they were each visiting relatives in Florida. They remained in frequent contact through emails and text messages but rarely met in person. Both teens reportedly struggled with mental health issues, and in July 2014, through a series of text messages and phone calls, a then-17-year-old Carter encouraged Roy, whom she described as her boyfriend, to commit suicide.

Roy, who was 18 at the time, parked his truck in a Kmart parking lot and began pumping carbon monoxide into the vehicle as he sat and inhaled the toxic fumes. At one point, Roy told Carter that he felt fearful and had gotten out of the truck. She then instructed him to "get back in."

“I am not going to sleep until you are in the car with the generator on," she wrote in one text.

According to Bristol Assistant District Attorney Maryclare Flynn, Carter had asked Roy more than 40 times when he was going to commit suicide. She argued that Carter used Roy's death to get attention and sympathy, and was trying to play the role of a "grieving girlfriend."

"She begins to get the attention she craved for," Flynn told the court. "So she has to make it happen—she has to make him kill himself so that she's not seen as a liar."

Flynn told the court that after Carter told Roy to return to his car, she then listened to him "as he cried out in pain and died" and did not contact his police or family for help.

Carter's defense team argued that Roy had a history of depression and had been on a "path to take his own life for years." They stated that Carter had attempted to get Roy help in the past, but as the Times reports, two weeks before Roy's suicide, Carter experienced a "transformation" caused by a switch to different antidepressants and "came to believe the best way to help him was to encourage him to carry out his plan to kill himself."

Judge Moniz determined that Carter's actions were "wanton and reckless conduct," and that though she was not present with Roy, she created "a situation where there [was] a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm would result to Mr. Roy."

"She did not issue a simple additional instruction, 'Get out of the truck,'" he said.

Carter will be sentenced on August 3 and faces up to 20 years in prison.